


Skin Deep (Extended Version)

by AmberDiceless



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: (He really needs one), A Horse With No Name, Gen, Historical Omens, Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Meta Fic, Night Mare, demonic physiology, snek!Crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:27:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23210038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmberDiceless/pseuds/AmberDiceless
Summary: (Or, Ambular Still Can't Stop Beating the Snot out of Crowley For Some Damn Reason.)Ever wonder why Crowley doesn't have a critter perched on top of his head like other demons?  Or why he so rarely is seen positioned to Aziraphale's right when they're together?Set somewhere in rural England, probably sometime after the Globe but before the invention of the automobile.It was a dark and stormy night...
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 106





	Skin Deep (Extended Version)

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a shorter piece published on [Tumblr](https://ambular-d.tumblr.com/post/612944844931940352/skin-deep) for [summerofspock](https://summerofspock.tumblr.com)'s [Great Good Omens Snake-Off](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/ggoso) (St. Patrick's Day 2020.)

When the Nightmare showed up alone at Aziraphale's door at the height of the severe storm, whinnying urgently at him and then seizing his sleeve with its fangs and trying to drag him out into the rain, he had a sinking feeling he was going to have a chance to say _I told you so._

For once, it wasn't a prospect he relished.

Nevertheless--after a bit of dithering, because, well, wouldn't _anyone_ with an ounce of sense hesitate to let themselves be carried off by a red-eyed, fire-breathing demonic stallion, in the middle of the night, into the bowels of the worst thunderstorm England had seen in decades?--he acquiesced and mounted the beast, clutching the pommel and the reins for dear life as they shot off into the darkness, striking sparks on the cobblestones and trailing heavy smoke that was slow to dissipate even in this torrential rain.

On reaching the site of the accident, it didn't take him long to piece together what must have happened. Or enough to go on, at any rate. The remains of a large tree that had once stood beside the road, its trunk split down the middle and still ablaze, and the sodden red-haired form that lay crumpled on the ground nearby were clues enough.

 _"Idiot,"_ Aziraphale fumed, clambering out of the saddle and hurrying to check Crowley's vitals. "Couldn't have waited til morning, no, you just had to go and try to prove me wrong, didn't you?

"You'd better not go discorporating on me, you insufferable _fiend,_ I refuse to be responsible..." The gentleness with which he turned Crowley over belied his angry words, and if his fingers trembled a bit as he pressed them carefully under the demon's jaw, well, that subsided quickly enough once he located a thready pulse. A heartbeat wasn't quite as critical a matter for beings of angelic stock as it was for humans, but you wouldn't find one in an abandoned corporation either.

Crowley's unresponsiveness was worrisome enough, though; it took a very heavy blow to render a demon unconscious. At least, so Aziraphale had always believed. The downpour made it hard to get a good look, even after he spent a minor miracle to summon a light, but the only sign of trauma he could find was a bruise just in front of Crowley's right ear. It was ugly, but had missed his temple by a good margin, and when the angel extended more esoteric senses to examine the injury, he didn't find any trace of concussion or of any serious damage to the underlying bone. He was no expert, but thought it unlikely that even a strong human would have been knocked senseless by such a relatively glancing blow.

What the angel _did_ find, though, rocked him back on his heels and brought the nature of the problem into sudden, startling focus--something that, now it was staring him in the face, seemed so blindingly obvious, he couldn't believe he hadn't worked it out for himself long ago.

"All right," he murmured half to himself, pointlessly dashing water out of his eyes as he took a moment to process what he'd just learned. And then, louder to carry over the storm: "All right, then. Crowley? I don't know whether you can hear me, dear boy, but I think I understand what's happened to you. First we're going to get you someplace safe, and then we'll see what can be done to help."

Even with the Nightmare's cooperation, getting both of them up onto his back and headed toward Aziraphale's lodgings was a challenge. The storm showed no sign of abating, and the horse flinched and shied at every crack of thunder along the way.

Drenched and shivering, Aziraphale finally threw all remaining caution to the winds and unfurled his wings, wrapping them protectively around himself and Crowley both. No one else in their right mind would be out in this, anyway, or could see more than a few yards in front of their face if they were. His feathers were soaked through and dripping like everything else in short order, but it was better than no shelter at all.

Some distance along, his distressingly vague sense of Crowley's presence abruptly surged, and the demon tensed and made a garbled, confused sound. Aziraphale tightened his arm around Crowley's waist, disheartened but not too surprised when his friend only twitched and flailed a bit rather than straightening up and taking his own weight.

"Easy," he called over the cacaphony. "You've had a nasty knock to the head--" he paused to wait out a loud rumble of thunder, "--but I've got you, I won't let you fall. Try to keep still, please. Home isn't far."

Crowley must have understood him, as he did go still, relaxing a little. "Can't...ssssee," Aziraphale caught a moment later, though the words were slurred and indistinct.

"There's not much _to_ see," he said, breathing a wordless prayer of thanks as the bulk of the tiny cottage he'd been letting finally swam into view up ahead. "Just rain and more rain. ...All right, we're here. Down we go, now--oh!"

He'd been speaking in preparation for another awkward struggle, this time to get them both safely on the ground. But the demon steed must have heard, or else he understood what was needed and acted of his own volition, settling slowly and deliberately to the ground so they could dismount with a minimum of trouble.

"Thank you so much," Aziraphale gasped, ignoring Crowley's inarticulate sound of protest and hoisting him unceremoniously into his arms. As urgently as they needed to get inside, he still paused to add as the great stallion clambered to his feet, "I'm so sorry, I know you need brushed down, and your tack--I just, right now I can't--"

The Nightmare snorted, twin jets of flame promptly going up as hissing columns of steam; he shook his massive head impatiently, tossing his nose toward the sky, and Aziraphale watched with relief as his saddle and tack simply evaporated. Then he lowered his head to nudge them, not _quite_ as gently as possible, toward the door of the cottage before turning and slogging off in the direction of the village's communal stable.

"Thank you," the angel called again through chattering teeth as he hurried inside, igniting the fireplace with a glance and depositing Crowley carefully on the small, crude bedframe he rarely used. The demon whimpered and twitched a little as Aziraphale shook his wings out and folded them away. If he was missing the sudden loss of their shared body heat, Aziraphale didn't blame him for that one bit; he felt it rather keenly himself.

He did have a warm quilt he liked to wrap up in for nights like this, though, that under the circumstances he didn't mind lending, and...well, if Gabriel wanted to take issue with his going over quota to get them dry, he could just _stuff_ it. A pneumonic Principality wouldn't be much use for furthering Heaven's objectives on Earth, and the dollop of energy it took to include one extra person in the miracle wouldn't be noticed.

"Angel?" As Aziraphale spread the quilt and tucked it securely around him, Crowley was blinking and shifting his limbs, aimlessly and a bit jerkily, not quite in a panic but not too far off from it. "Talk t'me, would you?"

Aziraphale lit a lamp, setting it nearby, then perching on the edge of the mattress. "I found you a few miles south of here. A tree nearby had been hit by lightning, and you'd been struck a blow that caught you right across the spot where you're tattooed."

"...ah," Crowley said flatly, as though that explained everything.

"It's not a tattoo at all, though,” Aziraphale murmured, tilting the demon's head ever so gingerly to the side to get a better look at the badly-bruised, swollen area around the snake-shaped mark that he'd just come to realize was so much more than it appeared to be. “Is it? It's... _you.”_

\---

“Nnnn...” Crowley shut his eyes. Blown full yellow and completely out of focus, they weren't doing him any good right now; the blurry double images were just making him feel sick. Sick _er._ “Yeh. Sorry. Should'a told you...long time ago.”

Stupid of him not to, really. It wasn’t as if Aziraphale didn’t _know_ he was a demon, of a snake-ish bent with a serpent aspect, or know anything about demons generally. That he hadn’t put two and two together before now was a little surprising, honestly. But Crowley had been just as happy to leave it be, unsure how the angel would react to that particular revelation, and none too eager to find out.

“Don't be.” Aziraphale didn’t _sound_ disgusted or put off at all--just a bit concerned--but Crowley still wished he could see his face. “It would have been helpful to know, but I understand why you didn't. Do you remember what happened?”

The demon grimaced, equal parts pain and annoyance. “Horse,” he muttered after a moment's laborious thought. “Stumbled...I got down to check 'is leg. Wuzza loud noise, 'n the bastard reared up 'n kicked me. Never did get along...”

\---  


“Not kicked, I think.” _And a bloody good thing he didn't,_ Aziraphale added to himself. A whole-hearted blow from such a powerful beast, had it landed in that particular spot, might have done much worse than merely discorporate his friend.

Now that he understood that, thinking back over all the ages since Eden, Aziraphale shuddered as it dawned on him how many times such a mishap _could_ have befallen Crowley, and just how many near-misses he'd been witness to without even realizing it. He'd have taken so much more care all these millennia if he had known.

“I doubt he would have come and found me, if it had been intentional,” he added. Not only that; the big, normally surly and standoffish brute had seemed almost chagrined, and surprisingly eager to help through the whole ordeal. Apparently all of Aziraphale's attempts to befriend him hadn't gone entirely to waste.

“Could be. Storm might've spooked him.” Crowley dredged up a hint of a chuckle. “Guess 'e knows 'm the best of a bad lot.”

“Yes, he's disturbingly intelligent.” Smart enough, at the very least, to grasp his good fortune in being assigned to the only demon alive who didn't delight in cruelty for cruelty's sake, Aziraphale reckoned, even if the pair of them mixed like oil and water.

“He did clip you a good one, though.” The angel hesitated. “Is this...something that can heal?”

“Should.” Crowley sighed raggedly. “'m lucky...coulda been a lot worse. Jus' gotta wait it out.”

Aziraphale opened his mouth, then shut it again, rubbing his forehead. He shouldn't, he really shouldn't. Just having brought Crowley back to safety—with help from a _Nightmare,_ no less--and trying to make him comfortable, to the extent that was possible, would get him into no end of trouble if his superiors caught wind of it. But the demon was entirely helpless like this, with his serpentine native form injured and its ties to his corporation half-severed; it just wouldn't sit right to leave him here alone in such a state.

“Well. I don't have anywhere else to be.” Aziraphale was a terrible liar, but Crowley was in no condition to call him out, and that fool deacon a few villages over could bloody well wait a few days for his moment of divine inspiration. Goodness knew he wouldn't be going anywhere further than the nearest tavern. “I can stay on for a bit, if you like.”

Crowley forced his eyes half-open and turned them vaguely in his direction, though they still weren't functioning properly. “Sure? Dun' wanna get you in trouble.”

“I'm sure.” Aziraphale pulled a chair up next to the bed and settled onto it. “Are, ah...are you in a great deal of pain? Anything I can do to help?”

“Some...”

\---  


All right, to be truthful, he hurt a _lot._

Tucked down into the smallest and most unobrusive shape it could assume, his snake aspect (which was to say, his 'real' body; though after nearly six millennia, he'd grown so comfortable wired into a mortal corporation that he was barely aware of it anymore unless something like _this_ happened) felt battered and bruised from nose to tail-tip, never mind how fiercely the whole side of his human head was throbbing. He couldn't move much either, and most of his senses were offline to a greater or lesser degree, which was more than disconcerting. But saying so wouldn't accomplish much except to drive the angel to fret.

Instead, Crowley shut his eyes once more. “N'much _to_ do," he said resignedly. "Jus' gonna sleep a while.”

“All right.” Aziraphale picked up his satchel and rummaged in it for something to read. “I'll leave you to it, then. Speak up if you do need anything.”

The room fell quiet for a few moments, and then he added very softly, “Crowley?”

“Mmm?” Jolted out of a half-doze, Crowley tried not to sound too irritated.

“Sorry. It's just occurred to me. Is that...” Aziraphale laced his fingers together atop the book in his lap, studying them intently. “Is that why you always seem to keep to my left?”

The demon's mouth twitched reluctantly into a suggestion of a weary smile. He _did_ habitually stay on the sinister side, didn't he? Well, it was purely symbolic, that. Just a whimsical game he played for his own amusement.

__

__

Nothing whatsoever to do with keeping his greatest vulnerability turned in toward his Adversary, the one being in Creation he most emphatically didn't trust. And who _definitely_ couldn’t be relied on to keep him safe until he’d regained his faculties and got back on his feet.

“No idea what you're on about, angel,” was what he said out loud. “G'night.”

**Author's Note:**

> Partly inspired by this passage in the book:
> 
> _The internal combustion engine had been a godse—a blessi—a windfall for Crowley. The only horses he could be seen riding on business, in the old days, were big black jobs with eyes like flame and hooves that struck sparks. That was_ de rigueur _for a demon. Usually, Crowley fell off. He wasn't much good with animals._
> 
> And by [this comment](https://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/185615045236/im-sure-youve-answered-this-in-the-past-but-why) from Neil Gaiman:  
>   
>  _(...why do the demons have bugs and other creatures on their heads...?) / The other way of asking it of course, is why do the demons have people-shaped things beneath them to get them from place to place?_  
> 
> 
> In case anyone's curious, my headcanon about Nightmares is that they're the damned spirits of horses who were put down for having killed a human. This particular one had very likely been mistreated by both humans and demons; Crowley (and Aziraphale, by association) may well have been the first man-shaped being who'd ever treated him decently--despite their not seeing eye to eye much of the time, to put it mildly.


End file.
